Not to mention the standard play w/ certain hands changes at different places.

At Foxwoods, flopping top pair = betting until raised. No questions asked. The players are too MUBSy to lead out their TT on a Q74 board, will often wait until a made draw before coming to life, etc.

Places like Commerce, though, where the game is also terribad (not that I've played there), I've heard it's much more LAGgy. Maybe with top pair there, you just let the opponent barrel off to you w/ the same hand.

Probably a good idea to understand how the "regular" guy plays at each place before constructing a strategy. I know at FW, it's a groupthink mentality of the correct ways to play (limp lots of hands and try to hit big, screwy PF raising tendencies, c/c down the instant a 3 flush hits, etc).

To be clear, I'm talking more about having a balanced/fundamentally sound approach to how you play hands preflop & postflop. Whether to play a hand or not preflop depends entirely on if you think you have +EV to play it, not whether some book or program says you should play it.

I think you have a different definition for "balanced/GTO" than I do, because I don't understand this sentence, but...

...I agree with this.

Damn, I wish that I could express myself as well as Doug does.

neway, PFR's so often c-bet w/ their entire range. I auto-call the flop bet and don't even think about his range. I'll be looking directly at villain as the turn is put out trying to pick up some info. Then I'll look at the card. I fold to any A, K, maybe to a . Like the man says, there's some guesswork involved. But even if we call down UI v. non-threatening cards sometimes and lose a couple of bets at least we send the message that we just don't simply roll over if we don't hit the flop hard and that has future value.

Grunch....

ATs KTs QJs AJ KQ 77+ (slightly looser rhan my opening range) . could prob add KJ/QJ QTs/JTs and 66/55 but eliminate those when he cbets plus the bottom portion of my first pf opening range as you did when he cbets.... but the cbetting respect thing is kinda Meh vs unknowns ...

I would (probably) over call OTF And CR once we are hu. Or you can CR a *safe* turn but I like raising while my equity is good per street - plus if a heart Comes ott you can fold out a lot six outters ...

The problem is you can't give him optimal cbetting strategy to boot unless you've been watching him like a hawk and you know for sure this is the case (another reason to pay attention when you're not in a hand) - doesn't sound like the case here... so I'm pretty much committed to showdown unless he gives me a lot of action post and even then - on this wet flop - it'd be a hard read but probably more reliable than playing weak passive against him.

Edit: I feel that vs a "good " player or someone whom you're going to be playing against a lot who at least tries to think balance does come into play here even though its sshe .... its not a bad idea to CR just because I would be cr'ing my wide semi bluffing range here. If he's a lagtard fish or idiot it doesn't matter. Its strictly for value. The fact that you pegged as perhaps alright is another reason to raise this flop imo.

This comment is contradictory - DUCY

LAG can be good (every once in awhile), mediocre (most Commerce regs, who definitely play aggressive but play too many hands out of position and don't handread well enough), or bad (maniacs).

Commerce is full of LAG's. It is not full of good ones.

since the title has nOOb in it, thought I'd jump in with a coupla Q's...

You don't think villain would cbet naked OC's? OC's with a bdfd?

What if the range you would normally c/r here includes sets, TP, 2nd pr+bdd's, 2 pair, fd's, and oesd's - is that still exploitable?

If villain calls with overs but wiffs/folds a non-broadway turn, aren't we happy about that when we have a vulnerable pair?

If we did take this line, we can just b/f a broadway turn (Edit: and 's) without being exploitable cuz we would b/3b our sets and made draws right?

Would or should? He's got 3 opponents. The board completely misses his range. Even if he showed AA, a lot of cold calling hands are fine to continue. This is a case where his range hates the flop and theirs loves it. A good player as tight as described probably knows this is a horrible board to cbet. If I were in the hand and hit hard from a blind, say a set, I'd definitely donk. OTOH, live reads >> how he should play. Zeke has to come up with his own guess b/c we weren't there.
We're the BB, so we have perfect relative position. UTG cbets. People do stuff. On the flop, I check to see. The c/r... let's go back to where we talk about the villain's range to cbet.
So we bluffed out worse while risking getting raised and having to make a tough decision. I don't see that as a win. There are ways it can be a win. A) the villain incorrectly folds a draw that was getting the correct price plus B) his raise always is a hand that beats us to the degree we don't have correct odds to draw. The pot being big is a negative b/c taking a passive line and inducing can both save the pot and get bets out of worse. All this requires us to range our villain and look down the paths.
We'd have to look at our whole range and see if we're open to something, like do we b/f too much? Are we bluffing to much?

It all starts with our read on the villain. That's our level 1. Where does value stand? Is a passive or aggressive line clearly better? Next, we look at our range and see if anything is open. Did we just turn our hand face up? This was a raised 4 way pot PF, so for someone used to HU spots the pot is a lot bigger than "normal".

I hope those Q's weren't out of line/unwelcomed/annoying...
Thx for letting me play, I'll go back to lurking after this

I know this stuff is basic to most of you, but this was an ah-ha for me. I'm thinking you'd also donk a NFD or NSD as well for value/balance since you wouldn't want those to check through either. I think I miss a lot of value bets by waiting to c/r hands just to have them check thru. Also helps explain the reasoning to check/call in this spot since we would have done something different with our strongest hands/draws. (i hope that made sense)

(also, Capn's comment about different places having different personalities was really interesting)

Keep posting! This place is 98% friendly, don't worry. All sincere Q's are welcome.

No no, stay and play! Your questions helped me learn more too, and just rereading this thread was good for me. And also what Howard said:

Not at all basic for me, which is why I posted it

Also DougL dropping some serious insight ITT. Preach on brother!

I read this thread quickly and did not appreciate how good it was until re-reading it now. Some golden nuggets are here for sure! Thanks all.